


I Told You a Thousand Stories and You Whispered in my Ear

by RisingShadows



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, They are once more very much in love everyone, Tom Blake Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:22:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23289214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RisingShadows/pseuds/RisingShadows
Summary: The war is over. They go home, it isn't perfect but they're surviving.
Relationships: Tom Blake/William Schofield
Comments: 4
Kudos: 74





	I Told You a Thousand Stories and You Whispered in my Ear

Thomas Blake survives the war. And he drags William Schofield through with him. But surviving the war does not necessarily mean living, it only means they haven’t fallen yet. 

Sometimes, sometimes Tom forgets. He feels blood dripping down his stomach and his breath stutters in his chest. Embers swirl around him and it hurts, it hurts to think he may be leaving the people he loves behind.

Knowing that he survived does not ease the terror it brings. Knowing that Will held him, kept him alive and coherent just long enough for medics to be passing by, does not stop him from feeling as if he cannot breath. As if he is dying all over again only this time Will is not there to hold him, to promise that he knows the way. That he will get there. No matter what. 

Sometimes he wakes panting to Will, gently pulling him into his arms, gently guiding Tom’s head to his shoulder, his voice murmuring a gentle sound in his ear. Sometimes, he tells him it is over. They are home, the war is won. They survived and even if occasionally the fight returns to them, they are free. And sometimes, rarely he whispers a poem in his ear.

Tom likes the poem best if he’s honest. Likes the rough sleep worn sound of Will’s voice as he murmurs the rhymes and all Tom has to do is listen. 

“They went to sea in a Sieve they did, 

In a Sieve they went to sea-”

And Will’s murmurs will pull him back towards sleep, safe in the others arms. His head settled on a warm shoulder, the beat of the other's heart in his ear. Will will cradle the back of his head with one hand while his other arm wraps around Tom and he knows, knows that this does not mean he is safe. Not truly. But in the dead of night, wrapped in Will’s arms he can’t feel anything but safe, and warm, and free from a war that nearly took everything from him. 

That could still take everything from him. He is young, resilient in a way some soldiers aren’t and that is a terrifying prospect. The idea that he might lose the one thing most important too him. 

Will is young, but Tom remembers when he first joined the eighth and Will was already considered lost. Remembers how the older men, the ones who had seen battle, had murmured about the look in his eyes. Has whispered to watch him, that if they went into battle, if he tried to go over, they had to stop him. To hold him back. 

Tom had thought nothing of it at first, and they had never been placed in that position. Not until Tom was bleeding out in his arms and Will was the only thing keeping him alive. 

Sometimes he wakes up and Will is shaking. Silent, even when afraid, even when trapped in twisted memories and nightmares Will is oh so silent. Tom is always careful then. 

Will can pull him from his nightmares with a gentle touch and a murmur. Tom can’t do that for Will. No he has to wake Will first, to call just loud enough that he jerks awake, panting as hands grasp for weapons that aren’t there and he turns terrified eyes on Tom. 

It only ever takes a moment, just long enough for him to find Tom’s eyes before he collapses back onto the bed and simply breathes. It’s in those moments that Tom can’t forget what needs to be done. Not when he’s pulling the other towards him, resting Will’s head on his chest. His ear pressed to bare skin. 

Sometimes it takes minutes for the other to fall back to sleep, safe in the knowledge that the other is alive, awake, there. Safe in the certainty of a beating heart beneath his ear.

And sometimes it takes hours, hours that they lay intertwined. Tom’s hands gently ruffling Will’s hair, cradling his head as he does for Tom on bad nights. Waiting for the other to understand, to remember that he is alive, and safe. That Tom isn’t going anywhere and Will is no longer trapped in the mud and death that was the trenches. The war still echoes in Will’s ears and sometimes, sometimes Tom fears he won’t be able to bring him back. 

But not all of it is pain, not all of it is this double life. This pressure to return to what you were and can never be again. 

It is better with Joe than with Tom’s mother. Joe understands and his mother tries, but she does not understand why Tom will grow nervous when Will is gone for too long. Doesn’t understand the fear that drives him. 

If a soldier is gone from the trenches, he may never return. 

If a soldier is sent on a mission, no matter how easy, no matter how low the risk, he may never return. 

Tom cannot lose Will. This his mother understands. Just as she understands now that Will cannot lose Tom. That Joe has seen something so terrible that he cannot bear to speak of it and Will is the same. That Tom may have survived, may have left the war early with a scar to show for it, but the war has never truly left him. Has never left any of them. 

But on good days, which Tom would say outweigh the bad ones, on good days when Will is smiling that soft gentle smile Tom loves so much, it doesn’t hurt quite the same. Tom can curl into Will’s side and smile up at him and rest his head on Will’s shoulder as the other presses his lips to the top of his head. 

On good days they can exist, and it isn’t gone, the pain, the memories but Will’s hand on the back of his head, his lips against his washes it away. Draws him free of the memories as if pulling a drowning man from the water. 

Tom can settle their foreheads together and breath, can feel the others breath against his lips and lean in just close enough to catch the others with his own. Can laugh as Will smiles at him and pulls him into his arms, down and on top of Will as they lay in the grass. Sunlight on their backs the wind in their hair. 

Will pulls him from the memories and he is free, free of the pain and the grief. 

He knows, knows that he can never fully take Will’s quiet sorrow from him, but he can shoulder it like any other weight. Can help him carry it when it seems it will crush him. Can lift it from his shoulders and hold it as he gains his bearing and they look to each other. 

Tom knows, knows that they are still the same unit they had become in the war. Sometimes when he’s alone he wonders what would have happened if he had never met William Schofield, if he had died on that abandoned french farm. Stabbed by a man he’d tried to save. 

Sometimes Will would pull him from his musings with a soft call and a gentle smile. Sometimes he would press a kiss to Toms forehead and cradle his cheeks in his hands and Tom would look at him. Would see what most people didn’t. What most couldn’t see beyond the broken soldier who never returned. 

William Schofield was not a broken soldier, William Schofield was not one of those who left and never came back. William Schofield was haunted, but all of them were. 

William Schofield who murmured children’s poetry to Tom in the dead of night. Who held him when he woke unsure of where he was. Who pressed soft kisses to his hair, and his forehead and his lips. 

William Schofield was his savior, and his redemption and so many things he could never explain. So many things that could not be put into words, because there were not words to articulate what the other was to him. 

Thomas Blake survives the war, William Schofield ensures that he survives the peace that follows. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is why you should never lock me in a house for more than a week apparently. Someone on the 2nd Devons discord somewhat prompted this (although this probably isn't what they were expecting when they said fluff about comforting each other after nightmares)
> 
> If I miss any tags please let me know! I'm terrible at knowing what needs to be tagged.
> 
> More of the boys being in love but with a little angst? Yep


End file.
